Edge Effects

Outline of Fading Empire

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:48:00 -0500

In the waning days the old stories do not hold. In the waning days language becomes thin and ghostly. In the waning days none of this registers. In the waning days people cling to routines.

In the waning days, trapped inside obsolete maps that distinguish up from down and figure from ground people see the world as given in advance as what is slipping away.

Tract

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:43:00 -0500

The Empire talks of freedom but relies on debt peonage to force open markets for agricultural overproduction. So freedom means freedom from necessity for shareholders in the corporations that benefit from this arrangement.

The Empire is built on weapons sales. When a war breaks out involving those weapons, The Empire dispatches negotiators most attentive to detail and process to broker a slow end to hostilities. These negotiators act as if they know nothing of how the weapons systems used by the combatants came to be in that place.

The Empire is a maze of bounded rationalities within which well-intentioned people carry out well-intentioned policies to the exclusion of feedback loops that would connect them to outcomes. The Empire is spaces made of mirrors.

The Empire devotes most of its resources to the elimination of The Enemy. The Enemy is the consequence of the Empire’s actions. The Enemy will never be eliminated. The Empire is a war on itself.

The Empire does not record its deterioration. It leaves that to the servants who archive things.

Interior Ministry Note:

This tract was found on the streets in front of the Presidential Palace.

We have it on reasonable authority that it was written by one of our people.

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:41:00 -0500

The Leader in a series of business suits steps down from a series of helicopters.

The Leader is a lifestyle.

He is in demand.

The Leader is the guest of honor at parties.

He is the center of attention.

The Leader makes friends and influences people.

He elicits the yes yes response.

The Leader reads Machiavelli on the weekend.

He drives a little red corvette.

The Leader is modest about his accomplishments.

He struggles with golf.

The Leader is different because he loves you.

The Leader loves you because he is you.

The Secret Lives of Generals

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 14:38:54 -0500

Accompanied by a wave of silence and another of flashbulbs, The Leader enters the press conference.

The prepared statement he reads is the same as every other: democracy; enemies; emergency.

The networks had preceded the event with grainy photographs by swimming pools and chains of compromising text messages.

The reporters want to know about the secret lives of generals.

The Leader talks about strides forward how we are all in this together.

But the secret lives of generals will not go away.

He adheres to the strategic line of not dignifying with a direct response

Inwardly, The Leader is pleased.

The press conference is being carried live.

What offended were not the indiscretions but their banality.

Risking everything should be beyond vanilla sex and protestations of undying love with interns who treat their situation like a Cotillion.

The Generals should be more something: more imaginative; more intelligent; more ruthless; more amoral.

That would justify the situation.

But The Generals did the same thing The Leader would have done.

It ran against his sense of hierarchy.

Detail View

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:32:00 -0500

Like all of us he finds himself in an environment of video feeds, tracking signals and monitored written communications all packaged as benign concern. It’s for your own good. You’ll never go missing.

He is shaped by economic conditions and adaptation toward the elimination of what is unnecessary. The restriction of his movements is accompanied by increasing pressure.

Late at night over a bottle of bourbon he plays a game of Russian roulette. When he loses, no electronic devices will signal: no-one will be notified; no search parties sent out. He will become details spattered about a room, invisible as the corporate persons who hide among the tax havens.

Square

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:31:23 -0500

The presidential palace is a network of barriers, a grove of antennae, a backdrop for broadcasts, a bristle of weapons systems, a knot of transmissions, a skein of referrals.

The presidential palace is simultaneous press conferences, gatherings of courtiers, images that were to be sent to mobile editing rooms replaced with the pre-packaged interactions provided by the helpful persons of the Press Office a real time saver, they say, we know how busy you are with all that breaking information and the doorways you must stand near in case the Important walks through.

The central square is jammed with people in the swelter and traffic and dust and the messages that transform it from one kind of space to another, from circulation to liberation, continuity to refusal by a reversal of polarities.

She is drawn to the swirling energies. A radiant moth she relays slogans. She moves discussion to discussion. She takes it all in. She works her way to the front lines of confrontation with the police. She looks around for informants. She thinks: Half of these people work for the FBI.

Geographer

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 15:19:00 -0500

We look for what is hidden in plain sight like those drone operators who find themselves in front of the infrared exoskeletons of the world they are from searching for the points where a bureaucratic reality intersects with the enemy’s horizontal surfaces.

There are no secrets.

Consider the national security state. We know that it is sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. We could map its extension, but the map would be endless. We could say what it costs, but the tally would be infinite. So there is no interest in knowing.

Concealment is needless expenditure.

The state allocates funds for our use, so we make the geography of institutions.

We gather data from e-book readers and cell phones to construct maps of the ways ideas move around.

At first we said: We know who reads what and where. We have abstracted figures and made them actionable. If X performs the movements that associate him or her with an idea dangerous to the state, X becomes a target.

But Ideological Forensics declared that an outmoded approach.

Now I maintain the database on my own: I chart the dances of activation and forgetting, sedimentation and variation and watch the world being made and remade there.

The Leader

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 15:29:56 -0500

Before The Leader was The Leader, he looked and looked for something until he forgot what that something might have been.

But he continued to search for this thing that he had forgotten and emptied himself out in the doing. He made himself a function. Now situations define him. He becomes what you want to see.

But I feel The Leader dissolving. Consent will not be orchestrated. There was a referendum and no-one voted. Such stubbornness and ingratitude after all I’ve done.

Elsewhere

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 11:55:17 -0500

Elsewhere is a low-rise facility in which the new invisible proletariat moves metal tubes through work stations, cutting them to spec and bending them a few degrees to the left.

Elsewhere is a resort where she lay on a chaise lounge watching walls of water move like solids until the surface tensions fracture and the wave collapses into a clap, each followed by another message to decipher as you reach for your mojito and look the length of her legs, your lingering on an arrangement of moles accompanied by a clap of collapse and she turns to look at you from behind sunglasses that erase her eyes and replace them with holes.

Elsewhere is the containers that arrive for famine relief filled with left plastic stiletto heeled shoes and millions of razor blades because you know how easy it is to break a heel in a drought and a gentleman needs to shave.

Elsewhere is an arrangement of people wearing business suits who sit in lotus position along a low-tide line, eyes closed, jackets and ties adrift in the rising water, waiting for something to occur to them.

The State of Emergency Show

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 10:10:24 -0500

The set design and reddish-brown lighting gives the theater the feel of a tavern scene from a Pieter Breughel painting.

The cast is seated around a table. They play cards and drink.

An actor stands from behind the table and moves to the foreground. He says:

The State of Emergency Show started long ago and there is no end in sight.

We have reached the end of one cycle. Here another begins.

As you can see, we play a game of cards. Who speaks and what they say is determined by the game.

We are a map of the world. We restate what everyone knows using an ontology particular to ourselves.

Security representations exclude security: we map security back in.

The military writes itself into the landscape: we erase the landscapes around them.

We are a state of exception. We are coterminous with everyday life.

Feel free to come and stay as long as you like. Or go do other things and return.

We will still be here.

If you feel inclined to come up on stage, we will deal you in.

That is how we grow and change.

There are rumors that we drink heavily throughout our performances.

I assure you those rumors are greatly overstated.

The actor smiles and holds up a tankard in a toast.

Welcome.

The actor sits at the table.

The card game continues.

Soon another stands, obviously drunk. The other wears a general’s hat. He says:

We are the nervous system of the nation-state.

Our activity is the container within which social being unfolds.

We are the present that monitors the present.

Because the enemy is probabilistic we hold up algorithmic mirrors.

We wait for the enemy to appear.

We are continuous war.

Geography

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 12:12:34 -0500

Everywhere you look you see Bartleby blocking traffic, Bartleby obstructing trade, Bartleby violating the prerogatives of private property, Bartleby inconveniencing with his I would prefer not to, Bartleby who does not want anything except to embarrass the regime.

Rumor of Arbitrary Disappearances

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 10:41:21 -0500

He was moving among the exploding snakes of tear gas when they came.

He was pushed into the back of a car.

A rag was stuffed over his face.

When he awoke was blindfolded.

He could feel handcuffs and leg irons.

When they stood him up, they removed the blindfold.

Someone said: The decision taken here will be immediately carried out.

Now he has been walked to a gathering by a fire.

Standing on a beach watching shadows huddle around a table, he imagines himself feeling his way along the end of this dreamtime until he finds a seam and climbs through it to the space occupied by the story with respect to itself and becomes one with the narrator who sees without himself being seen.

He looks toward the edge of a black plastic sea.

A call will arrive: they will say “Keep an eye on him” and drive away in their cars. In the confusion he will use the key George Washington gave him to unlock the irons and slip away, running until he hits the edge of continuity like a bird hitting mirrored glass.

He stands flanked by two men with another behind him.

One of the people by the table turns and addresses him.

You have been chosen by lot.

It does not matter who you are.

He watches the mouth of the Other move.

He can no longer speak their language.

Tranquility courses through him.

Perhaps he has already escaped.

He cannot move his arms or legs.

He looks up into a night full of waver.

Event Choreographer

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 12:14:00 -0500

Q. How do you see your role as event choreographer?

For a major political event, the multitude that fills the screen is a composition based on the latest demographic information. The Nation sees itself watching. The Leader is a television Charlemagne.

In the control booth I conduct a symphony of video feeds and sound. My crew is most responsive. My movements, made continuous and unbroken, become the movement that links the many to the one to their destiny.

Of course, the importance of event design cannot be overstated: the set design and positioning of cameras, the hiring of the caterers and the small amounts of tranquilizers that we give spectators so they feel content during the expositions, don’t fidget about or show impatience, while allowing them to still get excited at the appropriate moments.

So we are meticulous in our preparations. Then we improvise.

It’s all about rhythmic continuity. We do not impose it. We couldn’t if we wanted to. We find it. We bathe in it. The rhythm comes from the cycling of electricity and the pulses that move liquids through pipelines. These regularities are knit into the cadences of peoples’ speech.

People—-communities—-nations——are figures spread out in time. These figures are rooted shared rhythms.

We merely condense and heighten them.

We do not exercise power. Power exercised is power made fragile.

We organize the dance of consent.

Q. What do you think of the current unrest?

I do not watch events.

Q. Would you care to clarify?

We are not concerned with details. We do not provide messages. We leave that to the private sector.

We encourage the multiplicity of positions. We encourage debate. At times that debate spills into the streets. This does not perturb.

We do not want to dominate. Domination is inefficient. We simply maintain boundaries.

Geography

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 11:47:10 -0500

In the beginning claims they made were ethical. We will bring the greatest good. We will bring prosperity. We will make you safe. These claims cannot be falsified. They are a tone of voice that invites you to survey a landscape of wreckage and see it as other than it is. Despite all evidence, this is prosperity. Despite all evidence, this is freedom.

Journal of Failed Institutions

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 11:46:49 -0500

English Abstracts

An analysis of the implosion of traditional (Marxian) revolutionary theory by the withdrawal of consent in the context of overlapping top-down repetition based media environments. A description of how this rendered largely invisible the crumbling Marxist Imaginary. How this enabled such indications as did surface to be contained in the language of loss of faith. The implosion, which had multiple centers and which was spread over a considerable duration, crystallized at certain moments as something that had already happened. There follows a brief consideration of the implications of a collapse of a sense of horizons that lay beyond the immediate. The question is posed of beginning again. The author has no sense of who he is talking to. The considerations are vague.

This critical piece outlines the problem of analytic writing in a situation of ideological paralysis. The position of the reader as one hanging outside the world affected by paralysis, reading sentences that assimilate it back into a meta-register that is not affected is discussed, along with the problem of how that register assimilates everything back into a version the same. The more vexing question of how to proceed in the face of the above is outlined. But awareness of the contradiction between that project and the stated problem of analysis progressively undermines the writing and grinds the paper to a halt.

A second piece by the same author takes up the problems of writing in a situation of ideological paralysis using less self-undermining premises. The earlier position regarding analysis is retained as a structuring assumption. The project then moves through a series of spaces shot through with interference. The results are indeterminate as to genre. The argument, if there is one, amounts to: this is a mapping of paralysis. But a map is subject to interpretation, and the work of interpretation recapitulates the problem of analysis. Perhaps the rejection of analysis is self-blinding. No good alternatives present themselves. The paper breaks off.

18

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 21:00:47 -0500

Everyday life is walked across a net. The ground on which the net was laid is dissolving. Everyone continues their routines. The net pulls around them. They struggle to get out but their thinking is circular. No-one has a plan.

Geography

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 15:24:53 -0500

The Leader’s actions inadvertently revealed that power is held by the state: appointees control continuity; change is superficial.

That was not what the people wanted. It brought them onto the streets.

Now the perimeter of power is in the shifting battles among the barriers and tear gas.

The police break unauthorized cameras and observers.

The Nation watches official footage stream from their TVs.

Both People and Nation make themselves within circulations of images. Each image moves through a climate that aligns it with premises. The world is made from derived conclusions. The city intertwines them in accidental arrangements.

Everywhere is the sense that something is slipping away. Everywhere is an image that circulates through particular spaces. Everywhere is ineffable.

Billboard

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 15:22:37 -0500

The Leader loves you from a billboard over a locomotive of cylinders, rods and diamonds with open metal spinning flower wheels that shudders a plane of smoke and indeterminacy through a network of electrical cables, cracking towers and tongues of fire. The Leader’s love is dense with tags. Here I am.

15

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 16:45:00 -0500

I watch barometric pressures form into aerial equations.

I adjust the tin foil on the rabbit ears.

Through intermittent squalls I monitor the arrangements of share prices.

Everything is lining up.

The electricity cuts out so I go walking.

The ground beneath my feet is peeling skin.

I stop by Asbestos Mountain to watch the wind, filigreed and black.

The sound of every passing tanker is a swirl of devils.

I pull my scarf around my face.

When Christmas lights repeat my house I go inside.

I pour a shot of whiskey and turn on the TV.

There is nothing on except game shows and war.

Infrared

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 16:43:01 -0500

In my dreams I sense my extension.

I am subject and object, predator and prey.

I am a meteor that shatters bodies and buildings.

I am the hell from war movies.

I am superimposed layers of time.

I am a shower of fire.

I am an infrared space of blood and spatter.

I am an anglerfish in an oscilloscope among maps of waveforms

I am body parts that reassemble and dance.

I hear them howling into storms of noise.

I hang in the air and look at the world as if I am not in it.

The longer I stay the less I exist.

I see everything there is flickering infrared.

I see the incantations of time.

I see the capital flows and voices that bounce between the satellites.

I see the mass dream, the spaces in which it is open and where it is policed.

I see city streets and moving cars, geographies of fracture and pain.

I see the transient gardens that teargas makes as it drifts through the air.

I see the neighborhood I am from flickering infrared.

Edge Effects

Outline of Fading Empire

Tract

Advertisement

The Secret Lives of Generals

Detail View

Square

Geographer

The Leader

Elsewhere

The State of Emergency Show

Geography

Rumor of Arbitrary Disappearances

Event Choreographer

Geography

Journal of Failed Institutions

18

Geography

Billboard

15

Infrared